Chapter 2
Planning Your Message: Your Secret Weapon
In This Chapter
Strategizing for success before you write
Knowing your goal and audience
Making people care about your message
Finding opportunities to build relationships
Think for a minute about how you approached a recent writing task. If it was an email, how much time did you spend considering what to write? A few minutes? Seconds? Or did you just start typing?
Now bring a more complex document to mind: a challenging letter, proposal, report, marketing piece, or anything else. Did you put some time into shaping your message before you began writing – or did you just plunge in?
This chapter demonstrates the power of taking time before you write to consider who you’re writing to, what you truly hope to achieve, and how you can deploy your words to maximize success.
Adopting the Plan-Draft-Edit Principle
Prepare yourself for one of the most important pieces of advice in this book: invest time in planning your messages. That means every message, because even an everyday communication like an email can have a profound impact ...
